June 30

Well...there you have it. I’m in Taranto with Anziano Ascione....he is Italian from the north and he is great. Well what a crazy week. On Saturday morning, I received the call that I was leaving for Taranto to be a zone leader for the Puglia zone. We have from Foggia to Taranto to Lecce and everything in between. Pretty cool. There is lots of work to do . I’m happy and happy for this experience. One of the coolest things of this last week was on Sunday the Sicily stake was formed! It was a really cool experience and the members are blessed.
So I left Sciacca Sunday morning and headed to Palermo with all my stuff and then went to the conference and then went to Agrigento with the zone leaders and slept there. Then on Monday morning went to Catania and from Catania at 10 on Monday I took a bus by myself to Taranto and arrived around 7 that night. It was quite the trip. Upon arrival we went to the hospital to give a blessing to a member who was suffering from some kind of inflammation in the intestines. But in the WARD in Taranto we have around 140 active members . It’s going to be a great experience. Ohh on the 6th of July we FLY to Rome for the zone leader counsel and that is going to be awesome too. Anyway Taranto is a pretty big city and way bigger then any other of my cities and it’s pretty cool. There is a palazo next to our house that has like 20 stories! I also get to do splits in Lecce and I’m pretty excited about that and also in Bari....and drive a car. We don’t have the car but Statte a city next to ours has a car and for splits we get to take it :) cool.
I’m doing great and I’m happy and life is good. Well, I think president Taranto goes home today and President Kelly arrives today. Hoooray for Jerri!!! Jobs are good, and I hope Eric and David want to go next summer because we are going again
Oh, there are only two missions in Italia now and President Taranto is going back to BYU to teach so of course I’ll keep in touch with him...well if he isn’t an apostle by then. Everything is good and I’m doing good. I’m healthy and happy.
love, Anziano Hansen